Search form

Main menu

Ronald Haroutunian

bassoon

Ronald Haroutunian is an active performing artist in the New England area. He has been principal bassoonist with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project since its founding in 1996. Mr. Haroutunian started his formal musical training at New England Conservatory studying with Matthew Ruggiero, and later studied with Sherman Walt at Boston University. In addition to performing with BMOP, Mr. Haroutunian is principal bassoon with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and substitute player for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, having served as second bassoon with the BSO in the 1999-2000 season. His other ensemble performances include Boston Ballet, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Classical Orchestra, and Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra.

Mr. Haroutunian has toured with BMOP in New York City, with the Boston Symphony on their 1998 European Tour, with the Boston Esplanade Orchestra to Japan with conductors John Williams and Keith Lockhart, and also numerous tours in the United States with the Boston Pops. Mr. Haroutunian has been a soloist with BMOP, the Boston Pops, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Boston Classical Orchestra, New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra, and Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra. He currently teaches bassoon at the University of Connecticut, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Tufts University, and also maintains a private studio.

Mr. Haroutunian coaches chamber music with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, and has extensive chamber music experience working with the New England Wind Quintet, New England Reed Trio, Monadnock Music, and Alea III, to name a few. Mr. Haroutunian has been actively committed to performing new music since 1974, and has been involved with numerous premieres and commissions. In addition to recordings with BMOP/sound, Mr. Haroutunian has recorded on other labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, Philips Records, Northeastern Records, and Albany Records.

News and Press

For classical music nerds, the term ‘Double Concerto’ might likely bring to mind Vivaldi’s many works for pairs of violins or other instruments, or for the more romantically-inclined, Brahms’ Double Concerto for violin and cello. But there are many examples in the 20th and 21st centuries as well, for all kinds of instrument combinations. Last Friday night, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project gave a diverse sampling of the genre entitled Double Trouble, featuring four works composed between 1938 and 2010.

The double concerto, pace Brahms, is a creature of the Baroque era, really a special version of the concerto grosso with a concertino of only a couple of players blending with and emerging from the ripieno. The restructuring of large-scale composition around sonata form deprived composers of the natural recurrences of melodic strands that fueled the concerto grosso, making solo concertos a more logical way to achieve timbral contrast within the continual-development process of the more modern forms; yet, some Classical-era composers could not let go.

Virtuosity, in its traditional sense, is musical performance at its most outgoing; the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s Saturday concert — “Double Trouble,” a quartet of double concerti — revealed a plethora of extroverted strategies. The plurality of styles was a showcase for the flexibility of conductor Gil Rose’s group, switching channels with ease, burnished and rhythmically rigorous in a program marked by wide-ranging gregariousness.

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project performed alongside guest artist Kenneth Radnofsky to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence at Sanders Theatre on Sunday evening.

The concert, “Israel at 60: Six Decades of Innovative Music,” marked the world premiere of Israeli composer Betty Olivero’s composition Kri’ot, the first piece of Israeli classical music to join a solo saxophone—played by Radnofsky—and a string quartet. Oliveros’s premiere received a five-minute standing ovation from the audience.